Captain Marvel makes his debut - Marvel Super-Heroes #12.

With The new Avengers movie currently thrilling super-hero fans everywhere, it can only mean one thing.

That it's time for me to take a look at Captain Marvel's first appearance, in the pages of Marvel Super-Heroes #12, way back in 1967.

Admittedly, I can't see any link at all between those two things either but that won't stop me pretending there is one, in order to give me an excuse to do this post.

What happens is this. Upset that the FF have flattened the Sentry and Ronan the Accuser, the Kree upper echelons have decided to send Captain Mar-Vell to Earth, so he might succeed where his two predecessors failed, and teach the Earthmen not to mess with the Kree.

The only problem is that, the moment he lands, radiation from his suit causes a desert rocket launch to blow up, alerting the authorities to his presence.

Fortunately, our villain escapes by shooting the pursuing guards, with a black light beam fired from, "The galaxy's most common all-purpose weapon," before hitching a lift into town and checking into an hotel, under the name, "Marvel." It's explained that he can't sign in under his real name because that'd tip the hotelier off that he's an alien. To be honest, if I were an hotelier and someone called, "Mar-Vell," checked in, I'd just assume he had an unusual name. Clearly, other hoteliers are made of more paranoid stuff.

Sadly, we don't learn what fake first name he uses. I assume he doesn't check in as, "Captain Marvel," because that really would raise suspicions.

But, now, alone in his hotel room, Mar-Vell watches the skies and contemplates the mission ahead of him.

The first thing that strikes you about this tale is that it screams, "Stan Lee," at you. Right from the start, Lee gives us a love triangle of the kind he often seemed obsessed with. On the very first page, we learn that the beauteous but lachrymose Medic Una is in love with Mar-Vell but their commanding officer, the treacherous Colonel Yon-Rogg, wants her for himself and is thus out to make sure that Mar-Vell doesn't return alive from his mission.

Another Lee staple that quickly rears its head is that of the fatal weakness. We rapidly learn that, for all his aptitude, Mar-Vell has an Achilles heel - or, in his case, Achilles lung - because  he can't breathe the Earth's atmosphere and live. Because of this, he must drink a steaming potion that will allow him to breathe without his helmet for just one hour. Why do I get the feeling that future issues are going to involve him getting separated from his helmet on a regular basis?

Other than Stan the Man's typical foibles, the main thought that enters my head is that everything about the tale seems remarkably vague. At the beginning, it seems that Mar-Vell is being assigned to Earth by Yon-Rogg because Yon-Rogg wants to get rid of him but, then, later in the tale, we're told he's here under the orders of the Supreme Intelligence. We're told he's been sent here to punish us but it's not clear in what way he's supposed to punish us or when or how.

When he gets to Earth, he seems to have been dropped off at a random spot, with no plan and, from that point on, is clearly winging it. I don't get the feeling the Kree put a lot of thought into this mission.

You also wonder why, after a Sentry and Ronan have failed, a humble captain is now being sent to sort out the humans. You would have thought the loss of two such powerful figures would have convinced the Kree that they should be upping the ante and not downing it.

Anyway, it's difficult to draw too many conclusions about the good captain's potential from this tale, as it's only just over a dozen pages long and seems more interested in setting up the love triangle than anything else. Gene Colan's art is fine but I've never been convinced that sci-fi was his strong point. His hi-tech always looked a bit retro, even in the 1960s. Lee's script, meanwhile, is far too soapy and filled with what feels like teen-angst.

All in all, on the strength of it, you'd fail to be hooked but, with its promise of interplanetary espionage, you do at least feel there may be some good reason to get the next issue.

A final thought that does strike me, though. In the desert, the radiation from Mar-Vell's suit is enough to make a rocket blow up, from several hundred feet away. Just how much radiation is he giving off and how is he still alive?